Thursday, April 30, 2015

For galactic aeons I have wanted to develop the weirdo psychic powers of the Eld in the actual existing Hill Cantons campaign. Invariably I
always seem to bang my head against the brick wall that is D&D
psionics. An interesting and helpful discussion on Google Plus turned
up all kinds of svelte, homebrewed systems by Ramanan S, Roger GS,
Courtney Campbell and others (seriously quite well-done and free
projects, check them out).

But
I kept getting into that cafeteria mentality of wanting a little of
this jello salad, some of this mystery meat and a big heap of this
pecan pie.

One
thing that really shook out for me was that I was more interested in
a psionics-based class that was less rooted in a
spiritual/inner/monky kind of focus—not a great fit for space elf
sadists—and one more like the bad-good psychic horror-thrillers of
the 80s such as Scanners and Firestarter
and the goofy exuberance of post-apoc science fantasy novels like
Hiero's Journey.

I
also didn't want a whole new subsystem or mechanical layer to run the
damn thing but liked the approach taken by others to treat the powers
mostly like spells and retaining the traditional save-vs-XX system
(Alex Schroeder alluded to this in the discussion and it stuck).

Anywho
this is what was left over when I sat down at the table, a goofy
little PC class heavily-inspired by Mutant Future that I am
throwing out there for feedback. The version below is very much a
work-in-progress. What actually will appear in the Misty Isles of
the Eld will feature expanded/gussed up descriptive text and the deformations and powers will be revised and expanded (you will
note the current lack of 4th level powers).

Psychonaut

Requirements:
INT 11, WIS 14

Hit
Dice: 1d6

Maximum
Level: 8

The
class is predicated along the lines that psionics and similar mental
powers are attributable to mutations from the fallout effects of
“magical” radiation. Since the Eld make heavy use of such
magitech, the Eld and a select elite of Eldman slaves have organized
a corp of Psychonauts who willfully expose themselves to mutagenic
doses and spend their careers attempting to master the correct mental
disciplines to rein in the mutations. Blah, blah, blah.

The
Psychonaut saves and fights as cleric. The character can only use
leather armor but is allowed to fight with any weapon.

Each
level the Psychonaut gains powers similar to spells. However powers
are not mutable/memorizable like spells, once chosen they remain in
stock in perpetuity. Most powers have variable numbers of times that
they can be used in a day or week.

The
exposure to the mutagens necessary for the original transformation
into a Psychonaut leaves lasting effects. Indeed as the Psychonaut
unlocks and masters unused portions of the brain when gaining new
power levels, so does he often lose control over the deforming
aspects of that transformation. As such a Psychonaut will gain a
defective mutation when attaining levels 3, 5, and 7.

Level
Progression Chart

Experience

Level

Hit Dice
(1d6)

Defective
Mutation

0

1

1

0

2500

2

2

0

5000

3

3

1

10000

4

4

1

20000

5

5

2

40000

6

6

2

80000

7

7

3

160000

8

8

3

Defective
Mutation

Roll
d6

1 Almost
passable. Physical deformation under the clothes line such as a third
nipple, stubby tail, etc.2-3 Minor visible physical deformation
(-1 CHA). Eld Psychonauts treat result as no effect. 4 Major
visible physical deformation (-2 CHA). Eld Psychonauts treat result
as no effect. 5-6 Mental deformation (see chart below). An Eld
or Eldman Psychonaut unable to mask such a deformation will be
summarily executed.

Mental
Deformations

Roll
d6

1 Psychobabble.
There is a 25 percent chance on each occasion that the character
opens his mouth to speak that he will inexplicably begin shouting in
a manic, incoherent manner much as though he was speaking in tongues.
This condition will persist for 1d6 turns. Strangely religious
zealots and oral health specialists will understand the character
just fine.

2 Mumbler.
The character is unable to
speak in anything beyond a quiet mumble. Creatures of INT 13 and
higher can understand the character if within five feet of the
Psychonaut, all others will not be able to make out what is being
said.

3 Compulsive
Contrarian. The character
compulsively disagrees with any direct suggestion, assertion and even
basic statement of fact verbally presented to him.

4 Imposter
Syndrome. The character
actively believes that he is a fraud and not really the ranking
Psychonaut everyone else believes him to be. As such he must roll 4d6
against his WIS to use any power. A second attempt can be made a turn
later and the self-esteem issues related to that power will only fade
with a new day.

5 Phobia.
The character develops a single, persistent and deeply-irrational
phobia as per the GM's discretion.

6
Second Brain. The
character develops a second brain that hinders his thought processes.
This brain has 1d3 first level powers and a mental deformation of its
own, which should be kept secret from the player until an opportunity
to discover them comes about during play. This second brain may have
an entirely different personality and motives than the character, and
may even try to foil the character’s actions at inconvenient times
at the GM's discretion. Once per month the second brain.

MORE
TBA

Power
Level Chart

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

1

1

0

0

0

2

2

0

0

0

3

2

1

0

0

4

2

2

0

0

5

3

2

1

0

6

3

2

2

0

7

4

3

2

1

8

4

3

3

2

Power
Level 1

Zaxxyn's
Accelerant of Aptitude

Once
per day the Psychonaut is capable of concentrating his mental energy
to such a degree that one of his abilities is doubled (up to a
maximum of 18) for 1d12 consecutive rounds. Usable once per day.

Dxxmilx's
Duellistic Deduction

During
combat the character can attune herself to the minute body language
of others to the extent that she can often tell what they are going
to do before they do it. This gives her a +1 to hit in combat, and +3
hp damage per damage die rolled in a successful attack. Can be used
in two discrete encounters during a day.

Affected
Apportation

The Psychonaut can teleport
any object 10 pounds or less in sight range to a known location
within a 500 feet. Usable once per day.

Surface
Skim

The Psychonaut can read the
emotional state and barest of surface thoughts of a visible sentient
creature for 1d6 turns. Raw emotions, preparations for violence, and
hints of deceit will be reveled--though their precise nature will be
unknown. For example, the Psychonaut will know that the subject is
lying but will be unable to tell the exact nature of the lie. Usable
twice per day.

Power
Level 2

Antiorgasm

The Psychonaut releases powerful antiorgasmic energy in a 20-foot radius from herself. All opponents inside that radiance must save versus spells or suffer -2 to hit and saving throws for 1d6 turns due to the intensely uncomfortable and unsatisfying effects and will be unable to enjoy amorous activities for 1d6 days after the attack. Usable once a day.

Cerebral Boreworm

A single bolt of mental energy infallibly strikes a single visible target up to 60 feet away causing saw-like serrations to appear on its forehead for 2d6 hit points of damage. Usable twice per day.

Sleep
Egg

The character can will
herself into a one-hour coma that heals all of her hit points and
cures minor afflictions. While in the coma state a glowing white
egg-shaped energy field protects the sleeper from all non-magical
attack. This power may only be used three times a week.

Flx's
Flammifer Firkin

Same as Pyrotechnics. Usable
twice per day.

Pohlxx's
Psychometric Dowser

Same as Locate Object.
Usable twice per day.

Power
Level 3

Ninx's Biting
Troll

A spoken phrase delivered
with such psychic backing force that it cuts to the quick. A target
failing a saving throw will be unable to move or act for 1d6 rounds.
If used against the target successfully a second time the target's
brain will become fried, the subject will be in a rocking, babbling
catatonic state for 1d6 days. Usable twice per day.

Burlix's
Brainsploder

The Psychonaut can target up
to 1d12 living creatures in a 30-foot radius in a single burst of
violent psychic energy. The creatures must be three hit dice and
under or be higher-hit dice sentient creatures with WIS 7 or less.
Any eligible creature so attacked and failing their saving throw
versus magic will have their head instantly explode in a slow motion
fashion raining pink mist and bits of gore. Usable once per day.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

It's going to be a busy, busy summer
for the Hydra Collective.
Keeping to one of our core visions to serve as a quality publishing
vehicle for DIY game designers, we are expanding way beyond the
Slumbering Ursine Dunes crowdfunded line of adventures.

Trey
has already been working with us on the Dunes as an editor and
bringing his insights and experiences to the collective table as a
publisher. We are, not surprisingly, excited to have him come aboard
as a partner and co-owner.

But
that's not all, this summer (date TBA) we will be publishing
two new Strange Stars supplements
that will translate the system-less setting book into two
fully-gameable products: Strange Stars Fate (SF
Fate author John Till's translation and adaptation to the FATE
system) and Strange Stars OSR
(an adaption of the setting to the popular, old school Stars
Without Number rules).

Publishing Jason Sholtis's Operation
Unfathomable

Our next big publishing push is
expanding Operation Unfathomable. OU is a
combination underworld, outdoor and dungeon romp by Dungeon Dozen
author and prolific gaming illustrator Jason Sholtis that has
been published in little, tantalizing bits here and there.

This extended dance remix version will
feature:

Twelve all new Underworld
encounter areas including a complete Chaos temple and the cult of
actively hostile weirdos it houses.

A small wilderness sandbox
featuring five factions of sentient beings embroiled in mutual
exploitation and (in some cases) ruthless destruction plus a variety
of adventuring possibilities.

Scads of entirely new monsters,
treasures, spells, and NPCs, all easily harvested for use outside
this adventure.

Many new maps and illustrations﻿
(like these beauties below).

Anthony and the Full Monte

Hydra Collective
co-founder and editor/author Anthony Picaro has been busy working on
a big league project with Monte Cook Games. Needless to say we are all hella
proud of his creative work getting larger exposure. We will be
putting out some details and excerpts of his evocative and wry
California Dunes adventure later this week.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

If you've followed this blog for longer
than you reasonably should, you may remember that 3-4 years back I had
spent a good deal of time exploring domain level play. Indeed I ran
two whole campaigns, the Domain Game I and II, revolving around that
kind of play while trying to hothouse a whole rules supplement, the
Borderlands.

My own gaming and writing was swimming
around in a zeitgeist pool at that time--with ACKs and An
Echo Resounding coming into being as the best published answers
to that great supposedly unfulfilled promise of the “End Game.”

Eighty-odd pages of Borderlands were
finished and it was closing in on that last push for being published.
And then I balked it. I won't get into the nitty gritty (and some of it was an easy "I'm kind of tired of this shit" answer) let's leave it at “I was deeply dissatisfied
with how it played.” In a nutshell it failed in the same way I
believe most other attempts have failed by not making the “main
thing” the main thing.

Anywho there is a lot meat here for a
post debating the game design question “why most domain rules for
D&D don't build meaningful, engaging long-term play for D&D
campaigns.”

Instead it aimed to be more like the King of
Dragon Pass and the freeform wargame Matrix Game. With NPC advisers carrying and hiding most of the actual
domain business (by being “clicked on”) and presenting decision
points that gave players choice without swamping the site-based
adventure that is D&D's main thing. The system is still pretty
underdeveloped and the results somewhat a mixed bag from my
perspective to be sure.

But that's the fun of hothousing these things
in actual play, right?

An explored section of the Feral Shore.

Here's an actual example from campaign play. (Okko is a
frozen-in-time trap engineer NPC the party rescued and recruited to
be the chief steward of their Feral Shore colony.)

Okko's Report on King's TenOkko
seems to warm to his job and appears to be loyal, able and competent
from what you observe. He gives you the following report on how he
sees things.

What Okko is buying/building with the 1000
suns (all work listed will be done before next week by the available
labor):1. Two 10-by-30 foot cypress-wood and thatch longhouses.
One to be used as a workshop, the other for meetings/light work in
the day and sleeping area for 15 at night.2. A cypress-wood
stockade roughly 6-foot high to enclose the area before a proper
wooden palisade can be built.3. 10 medium-sized tents for
temporary housing4. An on-site worker of wood and
blacksmith5. Food for the party and all the hired help for a
month.

What Okko wants to know:Do you want to keep
this site as the basecamp? He lays out the pros and cons of the
site below and says that since no work has been done yet that he can
hold off on the work above if you want to place it somewhere
else.

Site Pros1. The soil seems fairly rich and
arable.2. Killing off the two crocs seems to have cleared
out the area of its most spectacular resident menace. There are
normal-sized crocs in the area but nothing as comparable or
aggressive.3. The surrounding flooded areas and serpentine-like
higher ground areas are pretty defensible4. You have plenty of
fresh (if brackish) water.

Site Cons1. It's in the
Weird (makes the hired help extremely nervous and likely to mean
higher chances of encountering beings who live in the Weird.)2.
It's surrounded by a swamp (bugs, humidity and mud).

Domain Skills and
Resolution
Each PC can take a Major concentration and a Minor
from the following list and computes their skill on the second chart
below.

Domain Score
x1
level for your Major
x.5 level for your Minor (round down)
+/-
best single ability modifier for INT, WIS and CHA
+/-
special circumstances (things like education in a certain skill,
upbringing, etc)

Example: Kraggo of the Mountains is a 4th
level fighter with a 7 INT, 11 WIS and 17 CHA. He takes Martial for
his Major which gives him for 4 for his lets plus 2 for his CHA for a
total of 6. He takes Ranging as his minor for a total of 2.

Domain
Ring NPCs

The Domain Ring is your team of NPC
advisers. Beyond providing for gamable action points in and between
sessions Ring NPCs are the ones taking on the actual (and often
boring and/or granular) tasks of running the demense. Delegating work
to the Ring represents “rule by sinecure” inherent for a game
where the PCs are adventurers first and has a mechanical advantage as
such. A single PC can add their skill level (must be the exact skill
being used by the NPC) to any domain action roll taken by a Ring NPC.

Domain Action Resolution
If there is
a particular situation that I think will call for a roll against an
appropriate PC or NPC's relevant skill. The relative difficulty of
the course of action described will be adjudicated secretly from my
judgment of what is described.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

One of the most satisfying parts of
being part of a hobbyist subculture that loves pulling up the hood
and jawing at disturbing, perhaps commitable length about the various
whirly bits is running into your own little epiphanies. Tuesday I
slammed my laptop cover down and threw my triumphant fist in the air
with a “fuccck yeah” with the last great push on the Misty Isles of the Eld manuscript (the second big stretch goal
adventure coming out of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes project,
Fever-Dreaming Marlinko being in lay out).

Later that night with the
self-congratulation dying down it struck me that after laying down
yet another small bounded 1-4 session wilderness area that the
mini-sandbox has been my favorite way to game wilderness for a good
long time. I mean thinking back to my beloved hoary TSR favorites
Castle Amber, The Secret of Bone Hill, Keep, and that Gygax
Lovecraftian temple one that I am suddenly too lazy to look up they
all to a one have a small wilderness area (and often a small scale
human civilization bit) as a short main exploration phase.

Somewhere horseshoe close to when D&D
was born and the oil crisis was rearing its head, a collection of
essays called Small is Beautiful became a public intellectual
one-hit-wonder. Needling large-scale economies and political
organization as being beyond a sustainable human scale.

Hey but fear not I come not to throw
some politics or meaty real world thought in your face-- besides I'm
still enough of an Old Leftist/Modernist reactionary to freakishly
get a woody walking the grounds of the rusting hulk of a
horizontally-integrated factory complex like the Ford Rouge—but to
acknowledge there is something there there when it comes to designing
to wilderness settings.

Insert your mileage disclaimer—by now
we all know that people who talk in absolutes in a hobby environment
are buttholes—but I think there really is something there in this
area when it comes to sustaining a long campaign. Think of it this
way, D&D is primarily a game where the main play experience is
meticulously exploring highly-contained space. It doesn't have to
be a dungeon but that classic format sure comes back over and over
because it simply works

Wilderness hexcrawling has been there
too as a suggested major play arena since the get go. OD&D has
its random generators. B/X went even further presenting it as
conceptually as a whole new campaign frame for when PCs hit
mid-level. But from my experience there has always been something awkward and challenging about making all that wide yawning space notboring—and thus something you and the players will return to time
and time again continuously.

I have been running the Feral Shore
with its central hex-organized map as a major campaign phase now for
a year and a half. But the actual thorough wilderness hexcrawl
sessions have been a minority often a “we really need to get down
to figuring out what is going on behind that ridgeline of the Domovoy
villages” kind of impulse from the players. At most even when
really player focused we have never done more than three such
sessions in our weekly game in a row.

Invariably some other goal—exploring
the smaller bounded area of say the Rusevin (a city ruins pointcrawl)
or more prevalently a single-site or those beautifully eccentric
player-driven quests (“shit really need to go find that Drinking
Horn of Radegast to get those drained life levels back”)--pushes
its way forward and becomes the main thing.

The hexcrawling in other words is more
often a palate cleanser much like a one-off town adventure. Not
consciously I believe that's how I prefer, short sprints of such
activity around the main course. Maybe that's how it should be:
better-designed wilderness should be small in frame and densely
packed with sites. (Or maybe I am just rationalizing my own design choices with the Dunes as a small bounded mythical wilderness pointcrawl and the Misty Isles as a small bounded extra-planar pointcrawl?)

But back to you...

Is that the kind
of thing you have experienced? Have you run—and enjoyed—long
hexcrawl-centered campaigns or campaign phases? What made it
different you think? What's your secret, bud?

Monday, April 13, 2015

For going on four years now I have been
writing and posting the supposedly-weekly and increasingly
idiosyncratic news report for players and spectators of the eponymous
campaign to the Hill Cantons google plus page. Having written about how to use campaign news as continuity glue for a long-running campaign and having the blog slip way down the
list of my hobby-writing priorities--and thus in need of some
love—the news reports will now be appearing right here in the
future.

And now the News...

Hinek the Aft, notable local
lunatic and mariner, has been recounting wild tales of a supposed
landing in the fabled Misty Isles by his patroness and captain
the so-called Daughter of Ondrej. Bizarrely his first day of
yarn-spinning in the Marlinko bathhouses told of a stark, dead land
with “ridges made from the corpses of massive grubs”-- a story
quite at odds with the popular conception of the eternally
fog-shrouded islands as a bucolic paradise. Even stranger is his
apparent self-beating over the night and subsequent retelling of the
story in a broken monotone: “The...Misty Isles...are...a...wondrous
place filled...with...laughter and light...and that I have...never
visited nor can I speak with assurance..from a first-hand account.”

The recent opening of the
gaily-painted, if disturbingly and atavistically pagan High Temple
to All-Pahr Gods has brought in a influx of curious tourists and
dour, bearded faithful to the Feral Shore. When clicked on, the
colony steward, Okko, claims that nearly 900 gold suns have been
brought in from sales of bric brac such as Svat the Four-Faced carved
wooden posts, Marzana garlic wreaths and Radagast painted beer steins
in the first two weeks alone.

But income from schlock is not the only
thing the new Temple has brought in, the dedication has also brought
along two new inhabitants both claiming to have been brought by
visions sent from dying Pahr godlings.

The first of which is the strangest, a
bass-toned skald with the head of an enormous red rooster by the name
of Vyvod. Though an odd sight, residents of Karldeset and the
Domovoy villages, have warmed to his deep, catchy, self-valorizing
ballads and quite often one can hear on the winds the opening verses
from his most popular tune:

“Little Pavol and Vyvod

strutt-ing through the for-est

Never evere dreamin' that a schemin'
deodand and his posseWas a-watchin' them an' gatherin' around.”

The rooster bard's appearance was
followed the next day by a grizzled, long-bearded, wearing the
antiquated heavy armor that scholars call chainmail and looking to
all the world like he stepped out of a Pahr-themed historical
tapestry. Captain Slavomil as he calls himself is said to have
been touched in the head by a command from the long-thought dead god
Velesh to throw his axe into a local lake, seek the blessing of the
Lords of the Shore and begin to organize a warband for a long journey
around the southlands cape to conquer the City of Porcelain, a
distant, fabled, demon-haunted city of great delicacy.

Monday, April 6, 2015

With Fever Dreaming Marlinko (the
first Dunes stretch goal adventure) going through proofing, Anthony's
Cali Dunes manuscript going through its first round of
comments/edits (so excited), and the Misty Isles of the Eld
getting all playtested and written, I finally feel like I have
some mental room to juggle some other things.

And those things as a palate cleanser
point away from D&D and toward my old love Classic Traveller. The
following is one of the hooks from my new Tuesday mini-campaign
shared here because I hear sharing is caring. (My past Traveller house rules, variants and mini-campaign whoha can be seen here.)

The Adventure Hook

The Cerny Vlk, the
subsector-famous Boloerium (a paraterraformed asteroid-vessel used
for intra-system travel, see library data below) dedicated to
preserving pre-uplift wolf stock--and manned by a cooperative of
self-styled “lycanthropes”--has gone “dark” according to
months-old reports from The Grange. That wild and wooly system
of micro-republics hunkered down on trojan-point planetoids has
produced a not-too surprisingly conflicting range of hotly-contested
salvage claims. Putting hard credits where their vacc-suited
comm-boxes are, the system's two fiestiest polities, Cockyagne
and Hayduke, are reportedly both offering 500,000 CR
bounties to a crack “salvage and rescue team” for in-hand
repossession of the outbound ship.

Like most boloeriums, the CV is
dual-roled as asteroid space habitats and intra-space vessel. The CV
was constructed under the auspices of the Vlk Foundation, a
philo-bolo (collective doubling as a non-profit charity), six decades
ago for service in the Grange system. The foundation's terse
bullet-pointed mission statement blandly refers to “pre-uplift
conservation” and “maintaining the green fire of wild abandon
that burns away the blandishments and corruption of hypermediated
civilized life” as the Foundation's guiding vision.

The habitat's interior is a hollow
cylinder 6 kilometers long with the long sides sloping upwards
precipitously for a “height” of 1 kilometer.

The central space is dominated by an
artificial lighting and weather system that simulates cloud cover
that cycles randomly between a fine rain, partly cloudy and partly
sunny conditions on a twice “daily” cycle. The ten hour “night
period” is experienced universally across the interior when the
“sunline” lighting is reduced to a low blue-gelled hue. Internal
temperatures are set to range between a low of 45-60 and a high of
55-75 Fahrenheit.

Internally the CV underwent an
extension biome renovation two decades ago, the old patchwork of 114
micro-biomes was replaced with two larger more continuous biome zones
(and two sub-zones) to reflect a change in program direction by the
Vlk Foundation:

The habitat in perpetual spin (assisted
by the Forward Unit) creating internal gravity set at 0.8.

The CV is also set on a perpetual
intra-system vector between the grange points hitting all of the
major asteroids on the route in a slow annual route. It is impossible
under the current Cantonment level of advancement (TL 13) to build
power plants and jump systems large enough to be used on a Boloerium.

External structures include:

1. The Forward Unit or “Spinner”.
The original complex set up at the aft of the asteroid to excavate
the asteroid and importantly to to create its original spin with
chemical propulsion systems (and which today serve as an emergency or
correction system).

2. The Main Gate. An exterior complex
of docking gates, observation decks, warehouses, schlocky gift shops
and elevators to the interior.

3. The Pleasure Dome. A domed space to
use “party as a verb.” Includes a small personal airlock and all
the space mollusk tripdust one can hope for. Defenestrations are
purely optional.